The Not Quite Believable Story of Lemon Gently
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: Her father was her mother. Her home is in jeopardy, and Alex Trebeck isn't looking happy. A space ship has landed on her lawn, and an alien is offering to show her adventures, excitement, and really wild things. And her name is Lemon.
1. Chapter 1

"_What's this about?"_

"_We call it life."_

"_Why do you call it that?"_

"_Because its real name is unprintable."_

I believe it all started when my father, Dirk Gently, aka Svlad Cjelli, aka Jane Austen, aka Man in Red Hat, became the first man ever to get pregnant.

I know. This isn't a promising beginning. But hear me out. Just for a bit.

My father, Dirk as most people called him, was a gently rotund man, an earnest if slightly insane man, and a quite unattractive man. Since he published two volumes of his adventures (under a pseudonym which I'm not going to actually mention because I'm fairly certain most of you have a good idea what it is) he of course garnered legions of female fans, all of whom would thoroughly dispute his unattractiveness— as long as he remains, to their minds, a fictional character. If they came across him in real life, they wouldn't have given him a second glance. Or, indeed, a first one, unless they happened to run over him or something. Whereupon they would of course be properly sorry as one is sorry for an unfortunate fellow creature such as a squirrel which has just been flattened by their Volvo, but not attracted at all.

Dirk— I never called him anything else; he said it was for my own protection— however, wanted to propagate. He had a legacy— wit, brains, the aforementioned insanity— and by God, or whatever the reasonable alternative was, he was an athiest up until right before he died, at which point he was heard yelling fervent apologies skyward, he was going to hand it down to his children. Or— to his child, at least, his one child. You see, after he had me, the doctors said it would endanger his health to have another, and so he was unable to supply me with a brother or a sister.

At this point you are probably fuming at the computer screen or the page or, at any rate, print, and saying, "Wait a minute— wasn't this the plot of a movie starring Arnold Schwartzenegger?"

To which I can only say, yes, unfortunately, it was. And yes, unfortunately, I have seen it. And yes, unfortunately, I still have nightmares. But there the similarity ends, I hope. I pray. And that was a movie, see, and this is reality. You can easily tell the difference. Movies have Arnold. Reality doesn't. People in California may attempt to disagree with me, but please, think about it before you do, think about it good and hard.

Plus, its not like Californians have such a fantastic grasp on reality in the first place.

But I digress. I hadn't intended this to be a political commentary, though sometimes it slips in without my even realizing it. Suffice it to say that, in need of money and rather desperate, my father sold his body for medical use before he was quite done with it. I believe it was intended as some kind of scam, but it didn't quite pan out. The medicos caught up with him, he was hauled away screaming curses— not, apparently, for the first time— and the next thing he knew, little men in white coats were waving contracts at him and injecting him with worryingly-long syringes that had worryingly-yellow liquids in them. It could have been worse— they could have tried to remove things. Instead he got implanted with me.

He said he came out of the experience with new respect for women. I should think he'd have had to, considering he didn't have any respect for them previous. Anyway, according to him, pregnancy bears a distinct resemblance to the six or seventh ring of hell. He kept craving ice cream, his feet were always swelling up, and his nightmares— usually about a great strange eagle— returned with a vengeance.

Finally though, it was over. I was born. He took one look at me and sobbed, or so the story goes. I can't contradict it, having just been born at the time.

Two days later he named me.

Lemon.

Lemon Marie James Gently.

If ever a child had an excuse to turn into a serial killer, I did. My life was set— a life of ridicule and pain and an estranged relationship with my father, as we were far too much alike to get along very well.

Then, exactly seventeen years, eleven months, and twenty days later, a space ship came down on our lawn and told me the world was going to end.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Oh, my.**

* * *

"_Stop— that— bicycle!"_

_"Whaddya mean, bicycle! I've only seen him go out with women!"

* * *

_

The alien's name was unpronounceable, he said, but people where he was from had called him Ix. Because his real name was unpronounceable. One of the most reasonable reasons I've ever heard of; except, why Ix?

I didn't get a chance to ask him, because he started another sentence with the word, "However."

"However," he went on, "you can call me Ford."

I frowned slightly. "That doesn't sound very alienish."

"I'm not an alien, though."

"Aren't you?" I frowned again. "Isn't that your ship?"

"Oh, that. No. That is, yes. That is, yes, I came on it, no, it isn't mine. But from my perspective, you're the alien, see—"

"Except," I objected, "that this is my home planet. Not yours."

"Ah— yes. And it is going to be destroyed."

"What?"

"Destroyed," repeated the one called occasionally Ix and more normally Ford, patiently. "Its happening in every dimension. The Vogons are working their way through the multiverse. I myself," he admitted modestly, "have already been blown up several times."

I stared at him with what I like to flatter myself were disbelieving eyes. And yet how could I not trust his words? This was no hallucination— he was indutibly an alien, on an alien ship, from an alien world. His hair was dark red, near black, longish and not so much wavy as corrugated; it stood out from his face like a halo, alien in the extreme. His eyes were the most piercing alien blue— I perceived at once that he never blinked. His skin was pale, a peculiar, translucent, alien paleness. Also, he was wearing a loincloth. And he had an absolutely hairless chest.

He noticed me staring— not at his chest, more in the loincloth area— and fidgeted, trying to cross his legs while standing up. "Sorry, er, I've just been to Africa."

"Africa?"

"Yes, I left something there when I lived there two million years ago. Silly, really, but one does wish to keep one's belongings with one. Its its own," he added.

"Beg your pardon?"

"The ship. Yes, I realize that was a bit confusing as I left the apostrophe out. The ship, though. Its its own. Nobody owns it, it runs itself. Somebody uploaded a man's brain into the main computer by mistake."

"A man's— brain? That's awful!"

"Not really. He was a smart man, and he knew what to do with an opportunity when he saw one. He hires himself out as a sort of intergalactic taxi now. I would have brought the Heart of Gold but Trillian said she couldn't spare it. She seemed to be able to spare it to Zaphod, however." Ford suddenly glowered savagely. "And her daughter," he growled. He lapsed into introspection while I stood and stared at him. Finally he snapped out of it, and his cool blue gaze returned to me.

"Lets go, please," he said. "Got everything you need?"

"But I—"

"No buts," said Ford hurriedly, "or at least, very few." He appeared to have acquired a rush. "It'd be easier on the whole if we had no buts at all, if you please."

"But—"

"Do you not get the no-but concept?"

"Where are we going?" I cried.

"I'll explain on the ship," he said shortly.

"But why me?"

"I'll explain on the ship."

"I need to say goodbye to my father!"

"I'll explain on the— oh—" He looked at me. "Are you that young? You look older. Come along, child, there's no time for that. Come along."

I looked back at the house. Inside sat Dirk, most likely scribbling away at his latest masterpiece. He called it, so far, The Salmon of Doubt, a name that sprung from a very late night and fish-flavored wine from Alaska. I wondered if he would ever finish it.

I had meant to move out by my eighteenth birthday anyway.

"No time!" shouted Ford, a bit randomly, hustling me towards the ramp leading to the space ship. From outer space. It was a space ship from outer space and I was three seconds, if he had anything to do with it, from stepping onto it and saying goodbye to life as I knew it. "No time!"

I allowed myself to be hustled, allowed my gaze to be turned away from the house I'd grown up in.

My father— Dirk believes in the interconnectedness of all things.

Surely he would understand.

Either that, or be eternally confused when I never came in from mowing the lawn.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: I haven't the faintest clue where I'm going with this. You can tell, can't you.**

_

* * *

"Its always baffled me," he admitted, "but why is it that there are so many syllables in monosyllabic?"_

_"You're a moron. You know that, don't you."

* * *

_

The ship was strange; but I'd expected that. It would have been more odd, all told, if it had been perfectly natural to me to step onto an alien ship with a man who was not so much named Ix as named Ford. He was smiling at me in a way that I'm almost sure was meant to be reassuring. It made me very nervous.

"Can you tell me what's going on here? Or is it some sort of secret?"

"Yes," he said, rapidly, grinning, "a secret, a pact of destruction of everything on earth, of the earth itself in fact, and no one must ever know."

I narrowed my eyes at him and frowned.

"You're... joking?"

"Very good."

"So what's going on here, then?"

"The world," he said, dogmatically, "is going to be destroyed. Don't look so surprised. Its not like it hasn't happened before."

I leaned against the wall, but that didn't seem to be quite enough; so I found my way to something that looked curiously like a chair, and sat on it. It was bouncy but not uncomfortable. I looked suspiciously at Ford, who said obediently, "Why are you sitting on my pet?"

"Is it—"

"No."

"Its not really your pet?"

"No. That is a chair." He gave me that grin again, and slouched in a chair of his own, tapping his foot idly and jittering his fingers on the console that he'd seated himself next to. After a few minutes I realized that he wasn't really jittering his fingers nervously, as I'd though; he was actually pressing buttons. Buttons that would almost undoubtedly lead to the ship moving, which, I hated to think, would almost undoubtedly lead to my needing to be sick. I'd only ever been on one ship before, a cruise ship that Dirk had very sneakily insinuated himself on. Some people might call it accidentally getting on the bad side of a mean group of men, getting cracked on the head, and thrown onto a steamer bound for Africa, but he's my father, so I'm going to call it cleverly stowing away. On a steamer to Africa. Without any money and a seven year old who keeps throwing up over the side.

"Why me?" I said. Ford looked away from fiddling withthe buttons with some annoyance.

"Funny, I was going to ask the same question."

"Did you rescue anyone else?"

"No. No one else. Listen, Lemon, it is Lemon, isn't it, no mistaking that name, listen, Lemon, you must understand that there's no going back. The earth is going to be destroyed, and you are not. You have no home now. You have nowhere to run to when the world gets too crass and mean; of course you don't have to worry about the world getting crass and mean; just the rest of the universe. Are you going to cry? No matter how many times I do this, I don't seem to get any better at it."

I wasn't going to cry. "You've done this before?"

"Oh yes," he said candidly. "This is not my first temporal anomaly." He looked thoughtful for a minute. "As a matter of fact, I think I've said that before." He shook himself out of it and tapped at a few more buttons. "You seem to be taking it a bit better than Arthur did, at first. He nearly went berserk! Well perhaps not berserk. But he did look a bit startled. What's all this about unflappable Englishmen, I ask you. Arthur, now, he falls apart at the drop of a hat."

I shook my head and settled myself more comfortably in the chair. "Would you at least have the courtesy to inform me where we're headed?"

He stared at me for a minute. "Exactly like your father."

I waited. He blinked, very slowly, and ran a hand through his hair, standing it on end. It came away with a few ginger strands caught between his fingers, and he tossed these away with more wild abandon than such a simple action strictly merited, knocking another button or two with a wayward elbow.

"We're going somewhere nearly safe."

"Nearly safe?"

"As safe as any ship with Zaphod Beeblebrox and _Trillian's daughter_ on it can be." The inexplicable italics were accompanied by a look that can only be explained as a growl made manifest.

"Which is?"

"Not very safe," he admitted with another suddensheepish grin. "But you're rescued. Can't you focus on being glad about that for a bit, and let me get on with things?" Without another word he turned back to the console, leaving me to think about the shapes of things. For an alien ship, it was strangely normal looking. There was a potted plant in the corner, and trim around the corners, painted a friendly yellow. I crossed my legs with some slight difficulty, hoping he wouldn't notice, and glanced to my left.

A porthole.

Correct term for a spaceship's window?

I don't know. I'm not an expert on these things.

Some sort of hole, anyway, if that isn't too rude a description. Through which I could see a lot of dust and rubble, which I stared at for a few seconds before total shock registered on my face and I collapsed with a total absence of ladylike grace, or so Ford informed me when he woke me up sometime later.

* * *

This is what had happened.

The earth had blown up.

Dirk Gently had been completely unaware of what was coming, but he was quite aware that something had happened. He opened his eyes to an odd whiteness and frowned, because he hadn't remembered passing out in the middle of a cloud the night before. A good old-fashioned London pea-souper was the first thing that leapt to his agile if somewhat-overtaxed mind, but there tended to be fewer angels in London than he could see at the moment.

One of them approached him and introduced himself, smiling gently, as Aziraphaele.

"Am I dead?" Dirk asked.

The gentle smile did not alter; it unnerved him somewhat.

"Well, lets put it this way. You've lived your life an agnostic, professing that God may or may not exist."

Dirk swallowed, dry-mouthed.

"Yes."

"Well." Aziraphaele spread his hands simply. "You're half right."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Bet you thought it'd never 'appen!**

**Chapter Four: Dry Dock**

We found ourselves docking— I suppose its called docking, anyway— in the bay— some sort of bay, anyway, except, not a cargo one— of a ship— spaceship that is, not regular, garden-variety, sea-going ship— that was a bit bigger— at least— than the one we were already in. Also it was shaped like a running shoe. After that, things got a little Star Warsy for me.

The alien called Ford Prefect, who hadn't deigned to explain to me why he was named after a particularly buggery sort of car, gestured me towards the hatch.

"On the other side lay all the things you never imagined," he said rather pompously, and sniggered to himself.

I eyed him. "Will I like it?"

He opened his mouth, paused, reconsidered, then said, "Probably not."

"Then you go first."

He gave a light shrug of his shoulders and opened the hatch by asking the computer repeatedly to do it for him, getting irritated, threatening the computer, sweet-talking the computer, banging on the computer, and then finally just turning the knob by hand. To my surprise, the room we thus emerged into was in all ways perfectly normal.

Except for the presence in it of a man with two heads and three arms, that is.

He was ostensibly checking his teeth in a mirror held by a morose-looking little robot, but I could tell at once that he was in fact merely admiring himself. Maybe even admiring his teeth, I don't know, but there was little excuse for that. They were large and white and square and he showed them off far too much, turning and baring them at Ford in what was probably a grin but wouldn't have looked out of place in a miniseries by Steven King.

"Ford!" he said unnecessarily, since we all knew who Ford was. "Ford Ford Fordy Ford Ford Ford!"

Ford, thus haled, sighed deeply and dropped his jacket on the floor in the corner. The morose-looking little robot sighed as well and headed for the jacket, bending to pick it up; it couldn't get its fingers to close around it and the garment slipped off and landed on the floor again. The robot gave a sigh like one who has the weight of the world on its shoulders, and bent again; I didn't have to watch to know that the ritual was going to occur again. I didn't have to watch, but I did anyway. Not every day you see a frustrated robot.

"Right," said Ford, "who gave him sugar?"

"The President of the Galaxy, Ford, I'm the President of the Galaxy, I can take what sugar I want, but its not an addiction I can stop when I really want to stop when I really want to I just don't want to really."

"And caffeine?"

"Ex," corrected the first feminine voice I'd heard thus far, "Ex-President of the Galaxy," and the requisite space babe walked in; except, thank God, she wasn't a babe. She was smallish and darkish and had large deer-like brown eyes and a sensible nose and freckles. Clearly someone I could work with. Unfortunately she didn't pay me the slightest attention; instead, she quietly walked over to help the morose-looking robot, who didn't appreciate it.

"When one is trying to fulfill what few duties have been requested of one," the morose-looking robot intoned morosely, "and one's duties are fulfilled for them, one is truly made aware of one's incredible worthlessness, except in this case its me. Here I am, brain the size of a planet, picking up coats. I could be saving worlds with this brain, you know—"

"Hush," said the requisite space not-babe, and walked out, brushing tiny bits of dust off Ford's jacket. Ford called a thanks after her and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Woooargh," he said.

I was noticed, then.

"Hey!" said the two-headed, three-armed—

"Zaphod," said Ford, for which I was grateful.

"Stowaway?"

"Of course not. I brought her with me."

"Right, right, right," said Zaphod, "right, that's great, you found a friend, and I'm glad of that Ford, 'cos everyone needs a friend, the only question is, why?"

Ford almost blinked at him, but caught himself just in time.

"This is Lemon Gently," he said. "You know? Lemon? Gently?"

"Can you eat it?" said Zaphod.

Ford sighed again.

"Lemon Gently? Didn't we— did we not talk about this? I distinctly remember talking about it."

"Could be," said Zaphod, pursing his lips and narrowing his eyes at the ceiling. "But I doubt it."

"Did we not discuss the fact that the world was ending again, the planet was being blown up? And did someone not say, we should get out of here? And did someone else not say, yeah, sure, but how about taking ol' Dirk along? And did someone else not point out, but he makes a lot of trouble and mess, and did someone else not counter, yeah, but so do we all, and did someone else suggest how about instead we take his daughter for old time's sake, and did someone else not agree, and did another someone else not agree, and did someone else not say, hey look, I found a tenner?"

"Yeah, uh, that was me," said Zaphod, looking inexplicably guilty.

Ford immediately advanced on him with one hand stuck out. "Give it back!"

"I found it!"

"In my pocket!"

"I can't be responsible for finding something just because I've stuck my hand in your trousers!"

It was at this point that I said, "Right, that's about enough of that, thank you."

They turned to look at me, but neither of them spoke, and so I filled the silence for them.

"I'd like to know what's going on here. That is, maybe not exactly everything that's going on here, what with the hand down trousers examination, though perhaps that's not the best way of putting it— lets just say there are bits of this conversation that I would rather not be fully informed about. That way when the police ask me I can tell them truthfully that I really don't know. I tend to be wary about that sort of thing. But I would like to know what else is going on here, all this about the old team and messes and hassles and the earth blowing up and whatnot; clearly you knew my father, I get that, but how? Why? Where? When? What for? What was he doing? If there's any chance of legal action being taken here I think I should be fully informed just so I can protect myself. It only makes sense. On the other hand if it turns out I've unknowingly been kidnapped I'd like names and addresses so I can lay blame at the door to which it rightfully belongs."

They stared at me for some seconds.

"She really is Dirk's kid, isn't she," said Zaphod. It was not a question.

"Yes," said Ford, quietly.

"Belgium," said Zaphod, inexplicably.


End file.
